In 1980, when I asked the press office at the U.S. Department of Energy to send me a listing of nuclear bomb test explosions, the agency mailed me an official booklet with the title "Announced United States Nuclear Tests, July 1945 Through December 1979." As you'd expect, the Trinity test in New Mexico was at the top of the list. Second on the list was the Hiroshima bombing, on Aug. 6, 1945. Third was the Nagasaki bombing three days later.
So, 35 years after the bombings of those Japanese cities, the Energy Department — the agency in charge of nuclear weaponry — was categorizing them as "tests."
